#rooster x reader

“Bradley?”

You feel slightly nervous standing in the doorway of his bedroom, shivering in an old t-shirt and sleep shorts. The clock on Bradley’s bedside reads 1:34 am and you wince at the glowing green numbers. You shouldn’t be bothering him this early in the morning.

As if agreeing with you, Bradley groans softly, pulling the pillow over his head as the light from the hall filters in onto his face. You’re contemplating just going back to your room, but a sudden creak of the floorboards keeps you alert and you feel too scared to be alone.

“Bradley?” You try again, slightly louder.

“Mm.”

That’s as good of an answer from him as you’re going to get and you swallow, fidgeting with your fingers as you try to piece a sentence together. “I, um, I can’t sleep… I—,”

Wordlessly, Bradley shifts and opens his blanket up for you.

You blink, your breath rising hesitantly. “Bradley?”

“Get in.”

You move to the bed, laying on your back stiffly as Bradley lazily throws the blanket over you. His bed is much warmer than yours but, although you can feel your eyes getting heavy, you’re still nervous to fall asleep. This is a big step, sleeping in the same bed, and you guys are just friends. Bradley would regret it when he woke up, you’re sure of it.

“Is this weird?” You fixate your gaze on the ceiling. “Am I overstepping? Actually, now that I think about it, I’m really okay. I could just—,”

“Go to sleep, toots.”

You shut your mouth quickly, bunching the covers closer to your chin. Bradley is already making soft noises next to you, alerting you to the fact that he’s fallen back asleep. With one more deep breath, you manage to relax yourself enough to close your eyes. 

Bradley’s bed feels like perfect nightmare repellent, so warm and soft. The bed in the guest room is nice too, but it’s not as comforting, it doesn’t soak up all your bad thoughts and hold them for you. It feels impossible to be anything but calm under Bradley’s blankets.

It’s strange, since moving in with Bradley you can’t really remember having a nightmare. Maybe there was some fitful sleep you can remember hazily, but with everything going on you assumed your nightmares would be worse. However they only started picking up after your episode in the grocery store parking lot.

You were too embarrassed to face Bradley after all of it had happened, staying silent during the ride home and holing yourself in your room as soon as he unlocked the door to his apartment. Bradley let you thankfully, only knocking on your door to alert you that dinner was ready. You felt sick, almost too malnourished to eat, so you only had a small helping, eating a couple bites before getting up and excusing yourself quickly.

Movie nights halted, you stopped accidentally falling asleep on the couch—which was another embarrassing thing you noticed you did, and the nightmares started getting worse.

One thing you’re grateful for is that Bradley has yet to question you about what happened in the grocery store parking lot. He has yet to question you about anything actually. Though you’re trying your hardest, you know you seem off, like you’re almost back to yourself but not quite. You had to tell your friends at the shelter that you think you might be coming down with something, but Bradley hasn’t forced you to lie to him. 

And maybe that’s why you trust him enough to have come to him now. Because Bradley never makes you feel like you owe him anything—an explanation, or reasoning, or compensation. He just does what you need him to and leaves it at that. He doesn’t really know anything about you—he might not even like you—but you trust Bradley. You trust him enough to ask him for help.

Suddenly Bradley shoots out of the bed, bleary eyes trying to focus on you, and you wonder if he’s just now piecing together that you’re in his bed and how weird of a boundary this is for the two of you to cross. He looks at the door and then back at you.

“Get up.”

“I’m sorry,” you start, eyes widening as you hastily scramble out of his sheets. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t think—,” You’re cut off when Bradley grabs your waist and moves you over him to his side of the bed. You have to blink a few times, confusion—and the feeling of Bradley’s fingers on your body—lingering.

Bradley lies back down, already looking like he’s falling back asleep. “Don’t want you next to the door,” he says simply.

You fall asleep, warm and soft and safe.

“But he’s such a trooper, Bradley! He had to get most of his teeth pulled, so now his tongue kind of lolls out—it’s really cute. But, at least for this week, I thought he should get some fancy wet food.”

Bradley grunts in response, only listening offhandedly to you recounting why you’re at a pet store getting cat food for one of the elderly cats in the shelter. You seem to be back to your old self, partly anyway. You’re excited enough to drag him to a Petco, and wave at all the dogs walking around so Bradley feels that, at the very least, your mood has improved.

He still hasn’t quite figured out what had happened at the grocery store. Whatever it was left you completely out of it for the rest of the day and then weirdly quiet for the following ones. Bradley knew it wasn’t his business to ask, so he didn’t. You have friends - Natasha, your parents. If you needed to talk to someone it certainly wouldn’t be him.

You crawling into his bed was a surprise though, one he chalked up to being too tired to think it through properly. Bradley is still slightly confused why he let you. Keeping you company on the couch was one thing, having you sleeping in his bed was another. He thinks he just feels bad for you, but he’s also not the type to feel bad for people. It’s confusing.

“Bradley!” You point excitedly at a small chihuahua in a hushed whisper. “Look! She’s wearing a little sweater!”

“It’s… cute.” Bradley nods once in acknowledgement. 

His phone vibrates in his pocket and Bradley checks it discreetly as you move to gush over the chihuahua. In a turn of events he had never seen coming, Bradley managed to get himself involved with Jake “Hangman” Seresin of all people. A narrowly missed punch to the face resulted in the two sitting down and determining that whatever was going on was bigger than just you and him. 

Jake’s girlfriend had been your regular waitress at Knockouts—that was the extent of Bradley’s relationship with her, he didn’t even know her name—but for whatever reason someone thought he did know her and she was assaulted on her way home from work as a way to send him a warning. 

It took Jake a few days to agree to help Bradley out—and stop looking like he wanted to turn Bradley’s head into a stain on the concrete—but a few nights ago Bradley got a text from him. Jake always had a thing for revenge.

Hangman: I dropped the drugs off at Mav’s. He says they look like steroids, but he’s gonna have one of his cop buddies check them out.

You’re saying goodbye to the dog before Bradley can fully type out a response, so he simply likes the message and pockets his phone. With everything becoming drastically more serious, he’s been hesitant to get you involved with what’s going on. He’s sure Adler would have his head on a plate if he wasn’t. 

The pictures of you have stopped, so, logically, your role in the whole thing has too. Bradley has yet to bring that up to Adler though. For some reason, he can’t help but think he’s fallen into something much deeper than Razor and their fight outside the Hard Deck. Natasha had been trying to text Isaac, to get some answers or maybe let Adler come out of retirement and take a few swings in the ring Bradley wasn’t sure which, but the other boxer had been unreachable. 

“Her name is Petunia. Isn’t that just the sweetest?” You’re still talking about the chihuahua when you make your way back to Bradley and his eyebrows raise just slightly at the fact you’ve been talking about and to a dog for at least five minutes.

Before he can respond, you’re whirling around to look at dog toys—which are arguably not wet cat food—offhandedly asking Bradley if he thinks certain dogs at the shelter would like certain toys. Bradley knows that you don’t expect an answer from him. One thing he can say he definitely likes about you is, though you’re always chatty, you never force him to talk to you.

“Oh, Oscar would love this one!”

Out of the corner of his eye, Bradley notices two people moving through the Petco. They’re heading in opposite directions, both too caught up in their phone or the aisle signs above them to notice that their carts are about to collide. Briefly, Bradley’s mind flashes to the waste bin in the parking lot, sudden and loud. The carts get closer. He sees the terror in your eyes and the way you seemed to forget where you were. The carts get closer.

Without thinking, Bradley shoots his hands out to cover your ears, muffling the sounds of the carts crashing and the screams of surprise. You flinch at the unexpected feeling, turning to look at him, before you also notice the aftermath of the two carts. Bradley drops his hands once the noise has passed, trying not to let your look of gratitude affect him too strongly.

He didn’t even do that much, but you’re looking at him like he just pulled you out of oncoming traffic. There’s a soft glimmer in your eyes that Bradley can’t seem to tear himself away from and it’s like the air shifts. Like a spark almost, the kind he gets right before a fight.

He doesn’t let the feeling linger long, redirecting your attention to what you came for in the first place with a clear of his throat. “Which aisle’s cat food, toots?”

“Right. Cat food.” You bite back a small smile.

“Did you order a package?” Bradley hears you call as he steps out of the shower. 

His brows furrow because he didn’t order anything and he slides on his boxers. Maybe Natasha did. He wouldn’t put it past her to order something for the two of you without saying anything. Bradley can hear you hum to yourself as you open the package and he unfolds the sweatpants he set on the bathroom counter. 

He tries to guess what Natasha ordered. Something childish certainly, like conversation starters for old married couples that you would use unironically because that’s the kind of person you are. Bradley sighs at just the thought of spending dinners answering questions about his love language and life goals. It’s silent in the kitchen where you're opening the package and Bradley reaches for his shirt off the countertop.

The apartment echoes when you scream suddenly.

Without thinking Bradley drops the shirt, rushing out of the bathroom to find you staring at a cardboard box in horror. You’re covering your mouth with shaky fingers, your breath quick as your eyes start to water. 

“Oh my god—!” You interrupt yourself with a lurch forward, making a dive for the kitchen trash can as you dispel your lunch into it. Bradley acts quickly, clearing your face of anything that might get in the way as you gag repeatedly into the bin. 

He’s supporting you entirely now, not a single muscle in your body able to hold up your own weight as you hunch over. Looking over your shaking form, Bradley tries to look into the box and see what has caused such a visceral reaction in you. His blood runs cold when he catches sight of more photographs—but they’re not of you this time.

What Bradley sees instead is the bloody and beaten body of Razor, slumped in a bathtub, uncharacteristically relaxed. His neck looks almost too relaxed, and if that doesn’t clue Bradley into his current state, the bullet hole in the center of his forehead certainly does. In another photo, Razor’s lifeless eyes stare back at him, glazed over and glassy. They’re almost haunting, hollow and bloodshot. The only gleam in them comes from the empty reflection of the camera taking the photo.

There look to be about five pictures in the box, all at different angles and distances from Razor’s body. As if those angles were needed to convince Bradley. Though some of the photos are just Razor, limp in a dirty, ceramic bathtub, others capture a few men who Bradley doesn’t recognize. They’re dressed nicely—too nicely for what looks like a grimy motel bathroom—with polished shoes and ironed button ups. Though, even through the blurry pictures, Bradley can tell that they’re speckled with blood.

You’re whimpering against him, having emptied your stomach, and you hide your eyes in Bradley’s bare chest. “I know,” you whisper.

Bradley’s hardly paying attention though, something else catching his eye. Looking like it was haphazardly tossed in the box alongside the photographs is what Bradley assumes had triggered your frantic state of nausea. Because laying atop one of the pictures is a severed finger. He feels numb as he stares at the dismembered index finger. It’s almost like he can’t even see it, but instead, he sees what it means. 

Someone killed Razor. And they send Bradley DNA proof because they knew he might not believe they killed Razor. And they know where Bradley lives.

“I know,” you repeat and it pulls Bradley’s attention away from the box. “I know. I know. I know.”

“What? Toots—?” Bradley finally looks down to see that you are also staring at the box, your gaze hollow and empty as you shake against him. Bradley covers your eyes with his hand, pushing your ear against the skin of his chest. He swallows thickly. You’re still repeating the phrase over and over. I know. I know. I know.

Against his palm, Bradley can feel something wet. You’ve started crying.

“What do you know?” Bradley keeps his voice low and taps three times against your temple. He checks to make sure you can’t peek through his fingers and taps again.

Bradley taps three times again and then three more, and finally you can speak. “I know who was helping him.”

Bradley freezes.

Like there isn’t a box with a severed finger and pictures of a dead man sitting on his kitchen counter, he picks you up and takes you to his room. The box doesn’t matter to him, looking at it more doesn’t matter to him, he just wants to take you away from it. If Bradley had the time, he might have wondered when that had become his first priority, but he doesn’t, so instead he focuses on trying to figure out what you’re talking about as he sits you both on his bed.

“What do you mean?”

“I didn’t think he was serious. I didn’t—,” You’re talking to yourself now, in frantic whispers, and Bradley has to grab your hand before you can start scratching yourself.

“Toots.” Bradley’s voice is firm and you look up at him with wide, startled eyes, as if suddenly realizing he’s there. “I need you to tell me what you’re talking about.”

“I, um,” you close your eyes like you’re trying to spit the words out and, most likely without realizing, you move closer in his lap. “Look… I’m not proud of it and—And I don’t want you to see me any differently. I—,”

“Toots.”

You take a breath. “About—About a year ago, I met this guy. He seemed nice and funny—we met at a bookstore so I thought that meant something, I don’t know. His name was Elias, and he thought I was pretty, and I liked him. So we started seeing each other more. Elias was a good guy, um, but sometimes he… wasn’t. He just—Being around him was like walking on eggshells. I never knew if I was gonna come home to Elias, my boyfriend who loved me, or… or someone else. He’d do things, terrible things, and then he’d take me to the ER and make me lie about it. The worst part was that he’d always tell me how sorry he was after—how he couldn’t believe he would do that to me and that he never would again. I—,” Tears are spilling down your cheeks and you wipe them hastily, shaking your head as if ridding yourself of the thoughts.

“I finally built up the courage to leave him–obviously–but I was so scared. I—He always used to tell me that he was related to someone in the mob or something. At first, he’d say it and then laugh, really only when he got drunk. But then he’d get mad and he’d just scream it. That I didn’t even know how important he was. That I should remember that before I ever tried to leave him. I thought he was lying, or just trying to scare me, but…”

Bradley stays quiet. He watches your eyes dart back and forth as you recall the memory.

You close your eyes again, if Bradley didn’t know any better he’d think you were having another nightmare. “He’s in one of the pictures, I—I know it’s him.” A pained expression takes over your face and your lip wobbles as tears build up in your waterline. “I’m so sorry. This is all my fault—,”

Finally, the puzzle of you that has been taking up Bradley’s brain makes sense. The nightmares. Adler. The grocery store parking lot. They all fit together, each piece has clicked into place. Bradley doesn’t like this puzzle though. Your apologetic whimpers make him feel more sick and unsettled than the box in his kitchen. So Bradley finds himself doing something he hasn’t done since he was a child. He hugs you.

“’S not your fault.”

You shake your head, your breath stuttering against his shoulder. “He killed someone, Bradley.” 

“And it’s not your fault,” Bradley repeats. He drops one hand from you, patting his pocket, only to remember he left his phone in the bathroom, and looks at your exhausted figure slumped against him. “I’m gonna call Mav.”

You get up wordlessly and Bradley misses your weight, but he doesn’t linger on the thought, instead getting off his bed with the intent to leave the room. Before he can take a step though, you're freezing him in place by hesitantly trying to hold his hand. You interlock your fingers shyly as if giving him time to yank his hand away, but he doesn’t. Bradley looks down at you.

“Can I stay with you? Please?” You ask meekly. Bradley nods, keeping your hand in his as he leads you both to the bathroom.

He decides to keep the note at the bottom of the box—the one you clearly hadn’t noticed—to himself.

“I need you to tell me everything you know about the shady shit Razor was getting involved in.”

Natasha’s eyes widen in surprise when Bradley sits himself down on a bar stool without so much as a greeting. It’s afternoon so the Hard Deck is fairly empty—aside from the regulars—but it’s because it’s afternoon that it’s unusual for Bradley to be here when he could be at Mav’s.

Bradley knows this and he also knows that, logically, this could have waited until later, but you’ve been living with him for a little over two weeks and still your situation has yet to make any sense. Bradley’s not impatient, but he does want you out of his apartment. Your nightmares have also increased, which Bradley can only assume are now triggered by the reality of being actively stalked. But the fact that he’s stayed up most nights silently comforting you, in a way he still doesn’t fully understand, has nothing to do with why he can’t wait any later than midday to talk to Natasha.

The woman herself though doesn’t seem too interested in whatever Bradley has to say, her mouth only twitching slightly as she turns away from him. “I’m working, Rooster.”

Bradley crosses his arms, not moving from the bar stool. He’s not stupid, he knows she’s hiding something. The two stare at each other and it must become clear to Natasha that he’s not leaving until he knows what that thing is because she sighs in defeat. 

“You have to promise you won’t get mad.”

“I’m not promising shit,” Bradley grunts.

“Right,” Natasha kisses her teeth with her tongue, almost as if she expected nothing more from him. “Look I don’t know a lot, okay? And I didn’t exactly stick around to figure out, but—,” She glances around the bar before dropping her voice. “A couple months ago, Isaac started talking all this shit about how he was making it big, and not in boxing. I didn’t really know what it meant, but he was acting so weird I honestly didn’t have the time to think about it.”

“Acting weird how?” Bradley narrows his eyes.

Natasha crosses her arms defensively, as if, even in name, Isaac was something to keep herself safe from. “He’d ghost me for days sometimes, come back like nothing happened. I called him out on it one night and he kept saying something about ‘special friends’. At first, I thought he was talking about other girls, to spite me or something, but… I don’t know. I don’t think he was.”

Bradley pauses, the weight of her words catching him off guard. “What do you mean?” 

“He was… He was using, Rooster—I think he still is. He was fucking erratic, telling me that we don’t have to worry about anything anymore, that he made it big, bigger than any of us thought he could.”

Bradley shakes his head. “That’s impossible. Abnesti’s got him in fights, we get tested every other week.”

“I think I’m smart enough to know when Isaac’s on drugs,” Natasha snaps, before taking a deep breath. “Besides, I know he is, Rooster, because he tried to get me to pick them up for him once.”

“What?”

“I think he forgot we’d broken up or something. I don’t know what the fuck he’s putting in his system, but it’s messing him up bad.” Natasha grabs a cup suddenly, like the conversation is suddenly too much to have without something to keep her hands busy. “He was begging me, sent me an address and everything,” Natasha bites her lip, tightening her grip on her bar towel as her cleaning of the glass gets more rushed. “I ignored it, but he called me, like, seven times.”

Bradley purses his lips.

What Natasha’s telling him is impossible. Razor fights almost more than he does, and even illegal boxing rings have some sense of order—fighters can’t just pump themselves full of steroids and go buck wild. Instead, both Maverick and Abnesti agreed to have a third party come in biweekly for drug tests. If Razor was putting anything in his system, everyone would know, and he certainly wouldn’t be able to get away with it for months. So if it was a drug that somehow wasn’t getting picked up, what was it?

Bradley meets Natasha’s eye again. “Do you still have the address?”

The way you absentmindedly slam his car door as you hop into the passenger seat has Bradley cringing internally, but he bites his tongue before he can snap at you about it. You’re too excited anyway—not like you aren’t always—and Bradley doesn’t need you crying to Adler about his temper. That’s what he tells himself anyway.

Bradley isn’t entirely sure what he thinks about you. You’re overwhelming and, on paper, everything he finds annoying in a person. Logically he should have a constant migraine around you. You’re loud, and talkative, and almost always smiling, why wouldn’t he? But, for some inexplicable reason, he doesn’t.

“You can come inside, you know,” you gesture to the front door of the animal shelter and the words themselves should sound like a dig at Bradley, a reminder of how socially inept he is. But they come from your lips sweetly, like an honest invitation.

Bradley had taken to picking you up after work ever since you first started insisting on going. Given that your car had very clearly been photographed by whoever Razor was tangling himself up with, it made the most sense to him. He knows that a dark blue Bronco isn’t exactly inconspicuous, but given that you haven’t received any more pictures—and, notably no pictures of his car—Bradley thinks it’s the safest option. 

And maybe there’s the reason why Bradley can’t seem to be annoyed with you the way he’s annoyed with everyone else. Because, on some level, it’s his fault you’re in genuine danger. You certainly didn’t set out to be stalked by his rival all on your own. Whether it was his intention or not, he took your safety from you. And that was something you did nothing to deserve. So maybe that’s why he’s able to overlook all your… questionable quirks.

“What movie do you want to watch tonight? It’s your turn to pick one,” you remind him after whatever topic you had been talking about before ran its course and Bradley bites back a sigh.

Regrettably, movie nights had become a nightly thing for the two of you and once you’d stopped watching Jason Bourne, the choice of what movie you watched alternated between you both. It wasn’t that Bradley even remotely enjoyed that time with you—you’d subjected him to La La Land and he might never forgive you for that—but it was a way to ensure you’d fall asleep on the couch without being weird about it.

Bradley had never brought up your nightmares to you. He wasn’t sure how to and he’s sure it’s not any of his business. All he knew was that, for whatever reason, knowing that someone was next to you as you slept helped. Bradley’s involvement in that was a secret kept between him and your subconscious and he planned to keep it that way.

“Drive.” He says the first movie that pops into his head.

You light up. “Ooh, a Ryan Gosling binge, I can get behind that—Oh! We should save the Barbie movie for last!”

Instead of saying his impulse reaction of “Absolutely fucking not”, Bradley lets out a snort of air. “Don’t think this arrangement’s gonna last that long, toots.”

“I hope not,” you agree and your smile doesn’t falter. “But we’ll still be friends. Oh! Maybe I could finally invite you over to my place and we could watch it there!”

Bradley doesn’t respond, but that doesn’t seem to deter you as you start rambling on about other Ryan Gosling movies you like.

You really are something else. 

After a moment, a song comes on the radio and you must recognize it because you gasp, moving to turn it up slightly. You’re humming along contentedly, looking out the window with a smile, and Bradley physically has to rip his gaze away from you to focus on the road. His mind drifts back to his conversation with Natasha. Nothing is making sense to him right now, not you, not Razor, not a single part of it. He does know one thing though. This wasn’t some petty boxing rivalry anymore. And as he looks at you again, a warm smile on your face as you watch a dog pass on the sidewalk, he realizes that maybe it never was.

His jaw tenses slightly. Whatever it is, you had no business being in it. And Bradley would make sure of that. His phone feels heavy in his pocket, Natasha’s forwarded text weighing it down so much it feels like it’s going to rip through his joggers. Bradley swallows. 

“You alright spending the night at Natasha’s tomorrow?”

You turn at the sudden sound of his voice. “Yeah, that should be fine. Are you busy?”

The light ahead turns green and Bradley uses that as an excuse not to answer you right away. Logically he knows that Adler wouldn’t want him telling you any part of this. Honestly, Bradley doesn’t want to either—you’d probably demand you go with him and then compare the two of you to Scooby-Doo or some shit and that is just a bit above Bradley pay grade. On the other hand, he feels bad leaving you in the dark. You’re clearly terrified enough as it is, you’ve probably pictured far worse in your head.

Something about that makes Bradley’s hands clench against the steering wheel. Bradley decides suddenly that you shouldn’t have to worry about anything because he’d take care of it. You can watch dumb movies and drink shitty milkshakes and he’ll take care of the rest. He owes Adler that much.

Maybe he owes you that much too.

“Bradley?” You try again softly and he suddenly realizes how long the two of you have been in silence for.

He blinks twice to clear his head. “What?”

“I was just, um,” you seem nervous, playing with your fingers. “I was just wondering where you were gonna be—Which is definitely none of my business! You don’t have to tell me or—,”

“I’m taking care of something for your dad.” Technically, that’s true and Bradley thinks it’s enough of an answer to satisfy you. You seem to relax at it, at the very least, nodding along slowly. “I can pick you up tomorrow morning,” he continues.

Again, you only nod. 

It’s quiet for several minutes, the two of you lost in your own thoughts. Suddenly you perk up a bit. “My movie choice still carries over to the next night, right?”

Bradley’s lips twitch up just slightly. There she is.

Bradley slows his car to a stop, fitting himself in one of the many empty parking spots on this seemingly abandoned street. He checks his phone again, just to make sure he’s got the address right. In front of him is a dingy looking dry cleaner and, though he checks twice, the peeling, white numbers stuck to the window are exactly where Razor had instructed Natasha to go in his text. Looking at the dimly lit interior, Bradley thinks that, at least, the rest of his instructions now make some sense. 

The bell on the door twinkles lightly as he enters and Bradley takes a breath. It smells like mildew and soap, a dizzying combination that pulls Bradley into a sense of unease as he takes in the rest of his surroundings. The dry cleaners is entirely empty, aside from him and an older woman standing behind the counter.

Her hair is in a thick braid, strands of gray weaving in with the desaturated black. With deep blue eyes, she seems to be looking at him just as warily—no doubt due to the late hour and his daunting stature. Her lips are set in a small, crimson red frown, waxy and matte, and her hand, that was drumming red painted nails onto the desk when he walked in, has stilled. They seem to be alone, but Bradley doesn’t let that fact comfort him. His posture remains rigid and alert.

“How can I help you, sir?”

Bradley clears his throat, hesitating for just a blink before he continues. “I’m picking up dry cleaning for Steve.”

“Oh.” The woman seems to stutter, freezing almost microscopically, before regrouping quickly. “Steve?”

“I meant to pick it up earlier, but you know San Diego traffic,” Bradley recites, hoping he doesn’t sound too unnatural. The woman is already suspicious of him. It feels like the both of them are reading off of a script, more like two actors on a stage than two people in a dry cleaner.

An almost pained smile is forced onto the woman’s face and she nods. “Of course. Let me get that for you, sir. I’ll just be a moment.”

Unease dances in the air, like electric sparks that prickle at Bradley’s skin, but he doesn’t move. If he and the woman aren’t alone, he can’t show that that would make any difference. He belongs here. He knows what he’s doing. He knows what she’s coming back with. Bradley rolls his shoulders back, letting his belief in the mantra firm.

The woman returns just as quickly as she left, her lips a thin line and her hands almost shaking. What she sets on the counter isn’t anything close to dry cleaning, but instead a brown paper bag that’s held together with a single staple. She doesn’t quite meet his eye when she hands it to him and Bradley takes it from her grip carefully. One of the overhead lights flickers.

“Have a good night, sir.”

The bell rings again as he leaves, but Bradley doesn’t look back. He gets in his Bronco, puts the bag on the passenger seat, and pulls out of the parking spot easily. He belonged there. He knows what he’s doing. He knows what she came back with. He keeps that as a fact in his head until he’s no longer in view of the dry cleaner window.

When he’s a block or so away from the building, he pulls into a city parking lot, checking his surroundings before turning off the Bronco and ripping open the paper bag. A pack of needles falls into his open palm when he empties the bag and Bradley furrows his brows. Something heavy clinks in the bottom of the bag and Bradley sets the needles down to pull out two small glass bottles, both containing equal measurements of a clear liquid.

His thumb traces over the paper label. Most of the numbers and serial codes don’t make any sense, but what does catch his eye is the dark, bold GEPHORCE printed against the front.

Bradley can only stare at the substances in his hand, holding it up so that the light of a street lamp shines through the bottle. “What the fuck?”

“Will that be all for you today, sir?” The waitress hands him his bag of food with a polite smile.

The man with the scar nods. “That’s it, doll. Thank you.” He can’t help but eye the door, he’s been itching to smoke since he ordered.

“Alright then, have a nice night!”

The man with the scar lifts his hand up in a wave of goodbye, though he doesn’t match the waitress’s pep. He knows what his night entails—sitting in his car watching as he snacks on salty fries.

He throws the food into his passenger seat with little thought—it narrowly misses his Sony camera resting on the covered leather—and paws at the back pocket of his jeans. Leaning against the frame of his car, the man with the scar fishes for a cigarette. 

“Stupid, fuckin’ brat,” he mutters, striking his lighter a few times to get a flame. With his free hand he shields the lighter from the wind, bringing the end of his cigarette to the light. “Got me watchin’ a bunch of nobodies because he got his feelings hurt. Bullshit.”

It is bullshit, the man with the scar thinks, that he’s playing hide and seek like a little kid for no reason that’s important. One more night of Knockouts and he’s going to get sick of it. And then what?

He takes a deep breath of his cigarette. “Bullshit.”

The fries he ordered are cold by the time he hides himself in the shadowy darkness blanketing the parking lot of a modest apartment complex and the juice of his burger is spotting the bag with grease—no doubt sullying the seat underneath. It’s bullshit, he thinks, but he doesn’t linger on the thought as an antimatter blue Bronco pulls into its usual parking spot.

“Hey, big, bad wolf,” the man with the scar grins, jagged pinkened skin lifting up one of his cheeks. He reaches for his Sony camera, zooming in the lens quickly to snap pictures of the tall man who exits the car. A noticeable, brown paper bag clenched in his grip. “Where’s Little Red?” The man with the scar wonders.

“Do you want trail mix? I love trail mix, but I never eat the almonds. You know, sometimes I think I should just get peanut M&Ms, but then I wouldn’t get the raisins…”

With how tired Natasha had looked when Bradley came to pick you up, he’d incorrectly assumed that maybe your social battery was low enough that going grocery shopping with you would be tolerable. It took only five minutes for Bradley to realize how wrong he was and, since then, he’s been halfheartedly listening to you ramble on about things he didn’t even know people could have an opinion about.

“—But what do you think?” You’re blinking up at him, alerting Bradley to the fact that it was time to tune back into the conversation and he shrugs.

“Trail mix is fine.”

You put a bag of it in the cart, hardly finding room between everything else you grabbed. The two of you had only come in for milk.

As if reading his mind, you giggle. “I probably got too much, huh?”

You did, you definitely did, but Bradley also kind of likes when you giggle, so maybe it was okay. And Bradley doesn’t know what it is about you, but at this point he’s accepted that you aren’t a person he’s quite capable of hating. And maybe he doesn’t want to hate you, and it’s not just because of your dad. And it’s not just because he feels guilty. So if you were anybody else, he’d roll his eyes. If you were anybody else, he wouldn’t be here at all.

Instead of saying any of that, Bradley grunts.

“Well, we shouldn’t have to go again for a while, at least.” And, again, the thought of you and him for a while should make Bradley’s skin crawl. It doesn’t.

You lead Bradley to the self checkout as he ponders. You never seem to mind the fact he isn’t talkative—most people did, even Natasha got fed up with him sometimes. But, clearly, you talked enough for the both of you. He scans each item while you bag them and you ramble on about some story that you got reminded of when you looked at one of those gossip magazines the grocery store kept by their checkout. 

You’re still talking on your way to the car and Bradley’s not entirely sure he’s following because you talk quite fast. But he has plenty of trips from the cart to the Bronco’s trunk to figure it out.

“Oh, shit!” 

A metal waste bin bounces off the asphalt, making a loud, sudden sound that has both you and Bradley looking for the source of the noise. It’s hardly a threat, Bradley deems quickly, eyes landing on the college aged boy scrambling after the rolling bin, and he moves back to start loading more groceries into the Bronco. 

It takes two trips for him to realize that you still haven’t moved, that you’ve stopped talking completely, wide eyes staring at the spot where the waste bin dropped. “Toots? You okay?” He questions wearily. 

If you’ve heard him, you don’t say so, not even acknowledging his presence as you grab one of your hands with the other. Your eyes bounce all over the parking lot, your breath increasing, and one turn of your head has your eyes catching the sunlight and Bradley can see tears wavering at your waterline.

“Hey,” he says your name, but that only seems to cause you more distress, your head shaking vigorously as your breath increases. “Hey—,” He tries again, but stops himself quickly when his gaze darts down to your hands.

You’re scratching the back of your hand frantically, irritating the skin as though you’re trying to hurt yourself, but Bradley looks back at your face and you hardly seem to notice you’re doing it at all. Your nails dig in harshly, with a force that breaks skin. When Bradley notices beads of red starting to stain your nails, he snatches your hand quickly.

“Stop that. Why the hell are you doing that?” 

You still can’t hear him. Or maybe you can and you just don’t care, but Bradley’s pretty sure you’re going to pass out if you don’t start breathing properly. But you aren’t breathing properly, you’re just hyperventilating, and looking around frantically, and bleeding.

“Toots—,” From behind your head, Bradley can catch an older woman and her three kids wheeling their groceries to their car. And you’d managed to get directly in their line of passage. The little girl skipping around and talking to her mom animatedly pays you absolutely no mind. She also looks like she is about to bump into you—or if she doesn’t, their cart definitely will.

You aren’t listening to him and Bradley doesn’t feel like explaining a situation to strangers he isn’t even sure of himself, so without thinking, he takes your hand he’s still holding and tugs you into his chest. You collide with him just in time to miss the little girl galloping behind you and Bradley raises his hand to the side of your head to shield you from the family as they pass. The mother must take the whole thing as some public display of affection because all she does is smile at him gently and Bradley just gives her a polite nod. 

As soon as they’re far enough away, Bradley makes the move to drop his hand and let go of you, but you’re catching it before he can, shaky fingers pushing his palm against your ear. Your other ear is pressed to his chest and Bradley watches as you squeeze your eyes closed, tears falling past your shut lids as you take choppy breaths.

Bradley moves his hand so it’s covering the entirety of your ear and you let your own hand drop. There’s too much noise for you, he realizes. He stays silent—it’s not like he even knows what to say—covering your ear with one of his hands and holding you to his chest as he watches around the parking lot for anything that looks remotely like a threat. If only to keep himself from focusing on how exactly he feels holding you against him, his index finger taps lightly in three tap successions on the back of your head.

Bradley doesn’t know how long the two of you stand like that, but his shoulders finally relax when he feels three weak taps on his chest in response.